The Religion of Magic
by cassikat
Summary: AU.  What if Vernon and Petunia were actually religious?  What if Vernon was more cunning than most people give him credit for?  And what if there was an...arrangement...for religious wizards and witches?


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the universe of Harry Potter, that all belongs to J.K. Rowling.

**Author's Note:** This story was written in 2006, when I was a minutely active member of the Caer Azkaban Yahoo group. One of the members (Drake, as my notes say) had an idea of the Church having it's own magical school, which spawned this chapter, originally meant to be a lead-in to Harry getting a religious education regarding magic. A combination of Google-fu fail and RL being a complete wanker kept me from pursuing this further, so if anyone wants to adopt, feel free, just let me know so I can read your version. :) I may continue this, or it might simply hang around as an example of my first proper piece of writing.

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><p>Petunia Dursley placed the blanket-wrapped body of her nephew on the kitchen table, disgust and loathing fighting pity and a tired sort of grief within her. She sat heavily in a chair, unable to keep her eyes off the boy and the livid cut marring his forehead, her mouth moving slightly as she attempted to speak through the conflicting emotions now engaged in raging battle in her mind. Perhaps she would have sat thusly the entire day had it not been for her husband finally arriving in the kitchen and giving her an exterior focus.<p>

Leaping from her chair, she threw herself at him and wailed. "Oh Vernon, I can't believe those...those freaks could just dump Lily's son on us like this! I can't stand it! He's going to grow up to be just like her, no respect for anyone not like him, and following that devil with a smile on his lips!" Unable to hold back any longer, she buried her face in her husband's chest and wept.

Vernon Dursley chewed on his mustache in deep thought as he wrapped his arms around his distraught wife in an attempt to comfort and console her, frowning at the still-oblivious child who was the cause of her distress. Very shortly, two things occurred to break this tableau: Upstairs, their son Dudley woke and wailed his hunger to the house, while in the kitchen Harry yawned and shifted, blinking open emerald-green eyes as the letter tucked into his blankets fell to the table.

Letting his wife go, he dried her tears with a napkin and patted her cheek. "Petunia dearest, I'll figure out what to do - right now our Dudders needs his mother."

"O-of course Vernon. And...thank you." She gave her husband a watery smile and a brief kiss, gladly leaving the burden of Harry in his hands as she bustled about to ready breakfast for their son, whose wails were rapidly becoming screams of demand. Once she'd done assembling the needful she left the kitchen without a backward glance, trusting that her husband would be able to deal with this unwanted problem.

Meanwhile, Vernon sat in the same chair recently occupied by his wife and continued frowning at Harry for a long minute before reaching for the letter. Cracking the strange seal of four animals with an 'H' superimposed, he pulled out the sheet of parchment within and leaned back to read it. And read it through again, and once more to ensure he'd not missed anything. Rather difficult to believe as the letter was so very brief, but with that blasted magic involved, anything was possible. Grotty, devilish thing, magic. It could make anything into anything else, do everything imaginable and turn decent people into troublemaking layabouts. Where was the pride in hard work when all you had to do was wave a wand?

After he determined that yes, those few lines were all that were there, at least to him, he laid the letter on the table and began chewing his mustache again. Once more his eyes wandered to the green-eyed cause of so much distress, and he scowled and muttered. "Raise you as we would our boy and not tell you a single thing, that's what that old devil wants. Did you know that, boy? You're to be kept ignorant to be another pawn in a devil's game, just like your mother. Is that what you want?"

Ignoring the insanity of asking a year and a half old child what he wanted, Vernon watched Harry closely and finally smiled as the boy's eyes scrunched shut and his face wrinkled up. "I thought not. Well then boy - your Aunt Petunia might not have been able to save her sister from evil, but you aren't going to fall from grace like she did. We won't give you a chance to." As Harry finally let his hunger be clearly known by his moderate fussing, Vernon stood and mechanically began to heat some formula for the newest addition to his household, a maniacal - one might almost say fanatical - gleam shining in his eyes. He would have to wait for his wife to come back downstairs and see if there was any more to that foul letter before sharing his idea with her, but that devil Dumbledore would have a surprise waiting for him in ten years or his name wasn't Vernon Dursley!

Once Petunia had returned, it was determined that there was indeed an entire extra paragraph visible only to her, regarding some mish-mash about sacrifice forming a blood ward that would keep all of them safe from bad wizards as long as Harry could call their home his. The discussion about _that_ particular bit of freakish rudeness and manipulation lead to Vernon being quite late for work. However, today being a workday was no hindrance to Vernon's grand, albeit half-formed plan. He promptly called in and asked for the day off, giving as his reason the bare bones of the truth. He was admittedly rather surprised when he received the entire week off, but as his superiors said, correcting the mistake the well-meaning people who left Harry on their doorstep made could quite possibly take the entire rest of the week what with the making room for a new addition as well as dealing with the legalities. Knowing that there were others made as indignant as he was by the entire situation pleased Vernon considerably, and he hung up with a sense of satisfaction that only justifiably receiving the entire week off with pay could induce in a man.

Now that there was no pressure of time constraining him, he was free to explain the entirety of his brilliant idea to Petunia while their son met his cousin in the safety of a playpen. An hour or two passed in refinement until they had an actual plan, complete with a 'to-do' list. The first item being in fact, another phone call. This one to a very particular person, on whose words hung the success or failure of the entire endeavor.

"Ah, Father Turk? This is Vernon Dursley, and I'm afraid I have a small problem..."

TBC


End file.
